Spin
by SJlikeslists
Summary: AU Heather and Mitch are friends.
1. Chapter 1

AN: If you want to know the point of canon divergence for this story, then you need to read "How Mitch Never Met Heather" from the "Things That Never Happened" collection. Otherwise, jump right in - you should catch on quickly enough. :)

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

"If you ever get tired of those little kids hounding you with questions all day, then I'll make you a full time offer."

Heather laughed as she slid out from underneath the car she had been working on and reached for a rag to start taking a couple of layers of grease off of her hands.

"I'm already here evenings and Saturdays," she told the man standing beside her. "That's not even counting other times we see each other. If I stopped going to the school, you'd get sick of me."

"Not gonna happen," he informed her sliding into the driver's seat of the vehicle and starting it up on the first try. He gave her a questioning look after he listened to the sound of the engine for a few moments, and she shrugged her shoulders while she smiled. He shut it off and shook his head at her. "I have to keep you around if you are gonna keep going all car whisperer on me. 'Sides, you're good for business," he added in an undertone as he glanced toward the office where he had been talking on the phone before coming to check on her progress.

"I know that look," she said tilting her head to the side and examining his expression.

"It's nothin," he dismissed. "You still got that parent thing tonight?"

"It's not nothing," she ignored his attempt at deflection. She was starting to look a little bit miffed. "Who was it this time?"

"People are always going to talk, Heather." He sighed scribbling something down on the papers attached to a clipboard in what looked like an attempt to avoid eye contact with her. "I knew that when I came back here. I'm always gonna take a chance on running into one of Jonah's guys. There are always gonna be people who turn their heads so they don't have to look at me when we pass on the sidewalk. There's always gonna be Emily staring daggers at me like she's wishing that the ground would open up and swallow me whole." He looked back up at her and shook his head. "I never thought it would be otherwise."

"I can talk to Em," Heather offered.

"No!" Mitchell barked at her. "I don't want that. It's enough problems between the two of you because of me already."

"You were my friend first."

"Don't start that," he told her. "I'm not whining."

She raised an eyebrow and just looked at him.

"Okay," he admitted, "maybe I'm whining a little bit, but it's not a big thing. I don't mind. I got a past here. It's always gonna be there, but I'm starting to have a future so I figure that it all evens out." He grinned at her. "Besides, that puckered up expression that Gracie Leigh gives me over at the market every time I pick up groceries that makes it look like she's been sucking on a lemon is priceless."

"You like picking at people," she accused looking amused in spite of her tone.

"It's fun," he responded with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Or you're just damaged," Heather teased.

"I'll have you know that my state run psych profiles always came out more or less sane," he informed her wagging a finger in her direction.

"You keep telling yourself that," she snorted as she replied. "I think that last bit of finagling took care of it," she nodded her head in the direction of the car from where she had been washing her hands in a utility sink. "She just needed a little bit of motivation."

"It's a car, Heather," he told her leaning closer as if he was imparting some great secret. "Either the parts all work together or they don't. There's no motivation."

"Shoosh!" She exclaimed rushing over and running her hand gently over the front of the vehicle before ending with a few small pats as though she was attempting to soothe it. "You'll hurt her feelings, and I'll have to start all over again."

"And you worry about my psych profile," he quipped.

"You're just jealous that the cars like me better," she stuck her tongue out at him.

"I'm not jealous," he huffed. "You work your magic on the temperamental ones, and I get credit for running the best shop in town."

"You're the only shop in town right now," she reminded him.

"Doesn't stop some people from going elsewhere."

"Mitch . . .," he cut her off before she could finish the thought.

"I don't like this whole field trip idea."

"Like that wasn't an obvious change of subject," she glared at him before shaking her head and letting it pass. "I don't know why you're in such a bad mood about my field trip. It's a wonderful educational opportunity for . . .," he held up a hand to stop her.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure the little hellions are all salivating over a day of school that isn't a day at school," he muttered. "You know how I feel about that bus."

"It's always gotten us where we needed to go before," Heather answered as if that ought to be enough incentive to have a little faith in the bus in question continuing that trend.

"That bus is older than you are," he reminded her, "and they ain't never kept up the maintenance on it like they oughta. That engine is trouble. You're good at tinkering, but that monster is a little more than you need to be trying to tackle."

"Ah," she grinned at him, "you're worried about me."

"Shut it, Lisinski," he rolled his eyes at her. "Just don't go calling me when you're stranded on the side of the road tomorrow. I'm gonna be too far away to come play hero." She raised a questioning brow again, and he answered without her needing to verbalize the query.

"They finally figured out the mess up with those parts. I told them to leave them where they are, and I would come get them myself."

"Do I want to know where they ended up?" She looked genuinely afraid of what the answer might be.

"I'm gonna be making a six hour round trip," he admitted looking like he was none too pleased with the fact.

"Ouch."

"Tell me about it," he mumbled, "but I'm not giving them another chance to muck up the shipping. At least I know where they are right now." He gave her somewhat disheveled appearance a once over. "You planning on conversing with parents looking like that?"

"That would make for an interesting conversation starter," she told him gathering up a bag and heading for the door. "Drive careful."

"Don't misplace any of the rugrats."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

Mitch had had some seriously bad days in the course of his life. He had been part of a lot of ugly things. There were nights that he woke up drenched in a cold sweat after being trapped inside his head while images that were composed of his memories rather than some sort of fantasy construction played on a seemingly endless loop. He figured that there were some things in life that would haunt you no matter how much distance you put between yourself and them. He also figured that there were some things that ought to haunt you to keep you from forgetting how far you had come.

He had thought that there would never be anything that would panic him as badly as the night he knelt by his best friend as the blood pooled around the two of them knowing that there was nothing that he could do because it was already too late. He had been wrong. He had been so very, very wrong.

The sight of that cloud in the distance created a level of panic in him that he had never before experienced. He had, at least, been able to talk to Chris that night (even with a part of him knowing that his friend was already beyond hearing). He had poured out words as if they could take the place of the blood that was seeping out of him (as if they could work like glue to put him back together again). By the time the sirens had all worked their way there, he had been reduced to a half-choked out rendition of Chris's favorite song of the moment - so focused and bewildered that he hadn't even realized that his arms had been pulled around to snap on handcuffs until one of the officers was using them to pull him to his feet. There was no one to talk to now. There were no words to come pouring out of him to make himself better. He was in a car, by himself, not even ten minutes into a three hour trip home, and he had a moment of blankness that lasted until the change in the sound of his tires as they drifted off to the side of the road shook him out of it.

He corrected and felt a shudder pass through him at how easily he could have wrecked during the time he was distracted. He didn't even know how long he had been staring. He could only be thankful that there had been no other traffic. He tried to slow his breathing down in an effort to get his heart to stop feeling like it was going to pound its way out of his chest, but his attempt didn't seem to be working. He decided to focus on driving instead. For the first time in his life when confronted with stress, Mitchell Cafferty was completely silent. Not knowing where your best friend was when something horrible happened - that was enough to knock the words right out of you.

The thought that he would go to his little apartment in the back of the shop first never occurred to him as he finally rolled into town (having ended up taking a sight longer than three hours to get there - old habits pushing him to stick to back roads whenever there was potential trouble). The whole place was eerie as all get out with the lights down, but he found himself letting out a sigh of relief as he passed the school bus that was sitting at the gas station for some reason that he wasn't going to bother to try to wonder over. Its presence meant that Heather was back, and that was all that he needed to know. There was no light to be seen from the windows of the little efficiency place that Heather rented as he pulled up in front. That made him uneasy. He fully expected her to be flipping through a coffee table full of books by candlelight doing her best to get her head around what was happening. There was no answer to his knock (or to what might have turned into his pounding on the door). He was about to start yelling at windows when it finally registered that her truck wasn't there. He could have smacked himself.

He made straight for the shop and almost panicked when he realized that her truck wasn't there either, but he noticed the figure curled up on the bench by the side door just visible in the headlights. He slammed the car door a little harder than strictly necessary, but he needed to do something to vent a little bit of the tension he had coursing through him or the first words out of his mouth were going to end up being ugly.

"Hey," Heather told him wincing as she shifted on the bench. It was then that he noticed that she was sitting with her leg propped up and that it seemed to be in some sort of a splint.

"What happened?" He demanded.

"It's a very long story," she told him, "you might want to cut the engine on the car." He glared at her, but she just gave him one of her teacher looks back. He went to do as he was told. She had a flashlight on by the time that he returned to her side.

"It's maybe a little bit broken," she offered as she winced a little louder as she tried to scoot over so that he could sit. He waved off her efforts.

"A little broken?"

"They kind of had some more pressing matters to deal with at the clinic," she told him with a shrug. "I'm going over in the morning to get it sorted out."

He took her in as best he could in the low lighting. He had been around enough injuries (adrenaline had been his and Chris's drug of choice for years before they ever started hanging around Jonah's set up and the kind of injuries that it bred) to know what it looked like when someone was trying to ignore some serious pain. Heather looked a lot like what he remembered.

"They didn't give you nothin' for pain before they kicked you to the curb?" He growled getting a little indignant on her behalf.

She shrugged again.

"They gave me regular pain meds," she informed him. "They wouldn't let me have any of the really good stuff because they were worried about the potential concussion."

"Concussion?" He repeated sounding like he was gearing up for a rant. He was cut off by her watch beeping. She silenced the alarm and fiddled with it for a moment.

"Yes, concussion. No, you aren't supposed to be alone, but what they don't know won't hurt them. Alarm goes off every 15 minutes. No sleeping without someone to check on me for me. I'll be fine. Did I miss anything?"

"Yeah," he huffed, "you missed the part about what happened in the first place."

"Well," she drawled, "we could save that part for tomorrow. You look tired."

"Not happening," he replied. "I just volunteered to be your concussion check buddy. I think that means we've got the rest of the night for you to clue me in."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

He insists on dropping her off at the clinic in the morning. He thinks that she likely did have a concussion. There were a couple of points during the night when she was doing some disjointed rambling that had him concerned, but she always seemed to snap out of it fairly quickly (and the level of tired that they were both suffering from probably contributed to how out of it she seemed). He wanted to follow her in to make sure that no one blew her off with an insistence that they were otherwise occupied this time, but she wasn't having it.

He had a previous agreement that he was supposed to be out at one of the farms working on a truck that the family hadn't wanted to try bringing to town with the way that it was acting. He was regretting agreeing to what was essentially making a house call now. He was regretting more that Heather knew his books as well as he did and knew that he had agreed to make a house call. Most of the families around did their own work on their farm vehicles unless it was something major that had gone wrong, and Heather had had the brilliant idea that offering to go to them instead of them coming to him would be a great move that would make more people likely to give his new little shop a chance. He hadn't expected the owners of the other shops in town to retire to Florida and take a job in Denver respectively within a few months of his opening. He hadn't expected to find himself the sole option unless people went out of town (which plenty of them did). He had been unsure enough that the garage idea was going to work that he had given Heather's plan a shot, and he found himself a little bit stuck with the expectation that he would be willing to drag himself and a load of tools all over the countryside.

He tried to avoid looking at the "I told you so" smile that Heather had taken to giving him whenever someone was overheard referring to him as helpful, fair, and good at what he did after he had spent more time packing up, driving out, and all of that than he did actually working on whatever vehicle that it was.

"You're getting a reputation," she would tell him usually right before she nudged him with her shoulder.

"I've already got a reputation," he would mutter back. She would only roll her eyes and give him one of those looks that she had that said that she knew he knew what she was saying even if he would not admit it out loud. He found that look annoying (mostly because she was always right when she was giving it). He didn't much appreciate that he couldn't admit that he found it annoying either because that would mean that he had to admit why.

If there was ever a reason to not show up for work, then he figured it was a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Heather had just flat out worn him out with her arguing for why he had to go - that was all that there was to it. He was exhausted, and it was just easier to go. The sooner he got the job done, the sooner he could get back to check on her. She was hurting, and he hoped they cleared her for some better pain meds. He had extracted a promise that she would follow whatever directions they gave her about whether or not it was okay to walk on her leg after they were through with her. She had mentioned finding a ride, but he wasn't counting on it. Heather did way too much expecting the best out of people, and he had a feeling that she was going to get her heart bruised quite a bit when the people around her started having what had happened the night before sink in for them. People got unfriendly real fast when things went wrong. He had a feeling that there was going to be a whole lot of unfriendly going around pretty quick.

He felt his foot pushing the accelerator a little too hard as he thought of the other thing that Heather had mentioned about the school bus debacle. There had been a man named Jake that had saved one of her students and driven them all back to town. He could practically see the hero stars in her eyes when she talked about it (even through the glazy-ness that the concussion gave her). She had mentioned that Mrs. Green had been hovering over him. He knew what that meant. What were the odds that Jake Green would have just happened to come rolling into town on the day that the world went to pieces?

He was so distracted trying to not think about how he felt about Jake Green being back in town that he was nearly up on the woman walking down the side of the road before he even registered that she was there. There was no mistaking that blond. He pulled over and watched the play of emotions that flew across her features - relief first that someone had stopped followed quickly by aggravation as she registered who was sitting in the driver's seat resolving into the icy glare that she always used when she was forced to look at him these days.

He didn't say anything to her while she stood there making up her mind over whether or not she wanted to walk closer. Sometimes, he wondered about the ways that his life would be easier if he had come out of his time in prison with a chip on his shoulder and angry at the world - like how he wouldn't be stopped along the side of the road waiting to see if his childhood best friend's sister would decide she was desperate enough to accept a ride from him or whether even nuclear explosions would fail to overcome her intense dislike. When she moved, it was with a determined march as she wrenched the door open with entirely too much force. He braced himself to get an earful. He knew the look in her eyes. It was teenage Emily the day that she found out that he and Chris had been reading her journal all over again.

"I haven't seen any other cars for hours," she announced as if telling him that she was only sitting in that seat because she literally had no other options.

"Most people got more sense I guess," he muttered. She turned the ice glare on him. "Where's your car?" She huffed at him and rattled off the details. He felt his eyes widen. "How long you been walking?"

"A long time obviously," she snorted. "I wasn't exactly prepared for two flat tires." He gave her a questioning look. "I figured Stanley was closest," she offered grudgingly, "but I didn't think I would need to walk the whole way." She looked down at her nails for a few moments as he got the car going again. She sneaked a couple of glances at him before giving a resigned sigh. "Thank you for stopping," she stated as devoid of inflection as she could make it.

"Why are you out here anyway?" He asked her. It wasn't his business and no good was likely to come from trying to have a conversation with Emily, but he was doing her a favor. If they could break the ice just enough for things to turn civil between the two of them, then it would make things easier on Heather. He didn't need any of that unfriendliness that was going to be going around to get multiplied by adding more unpleasantness with Emily to the mix.

"I was supposed to pick Roger up from the airport last night, but there were these birds all over the road." She shrugged. "I didn't realize until I was already driving through them," she shuddered. He thought he heard her mutter something about creepiness. He was only half listening. He was thinking about what a flock of dead birds in the road meant.

"Fallout," he stated not really paying attention to the other person in the vehicle. "Must of flown close to the explosion." He did pay attention to the tone that she used when she questioned his comment.

"What explosion?" She demanded.

He looked at her like she was crazy before he really looked at her and realized that she had no idea what he was saying. "Em . . .," he started (falling into old habits without even realizing until the return of the ice glare made it register what he had just said). It grated on him. He was tired and confused and worried, and he was sick to death of walking on eggshells just to try to keep out of her way. She didn't have a monopoly on being upset about what had happened to Chris. If she thought he didn't think every day about . . . .

He took a deep breath and tried to rein in his unraveling temper.

"There was a mushroom cloud last night," he told her in as neutral of a tone as he could manage. "Couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like Denver."

The gaspy sort of sound that she made was not pretty, and her eyes were filled with panic as she demanded "You're sure it was Denver?"

"I just said I couldn't tell for sure," he huffed back at her.

"I mean you're sure that it was that direction?" She insisted.

"I ain't stupid," he informed her.

She sucked in air like she had been drowning and muttered something about safe and Roger. With her next breath, she muttered something about _him_ coming back and bad things happening. He was sure that she wasn't talking about her fiancé.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

Heather was trying not to think about the fact that she had just willingly allowed herself to be trapped in a mine by an intentional explosion, but it was a little bit hard to ignore. All she had to do was look up or around to have that fact hit home to her all over again. This was not a regular sort of an occurrence for her, so she was willing to cut herself some slack for the way that it kept catching at her attention. She could not decide whether it was more surreal that she was actually fully awake and living this moment or that the whole trapped like an adventure novel plan had legitimately seemed to be the best option available to them at the time. It had all moved rather quickly, but she wasn't really coming up with much in the way of other options even now with time on her hands and a brain that was stuck in processing mode. Granted, this was not something within her area of expertise, so there might have been something that should have been obvious that she was missing.

She hoped that Jake had made it back to town alright before the rain started. She still wasn't sure how he had gotten volunteered to be the one doing the actual detonation part of this endeavor when there were people who actually worked at the mine around, but she hadn't been in on the executive planning session (wasn't sure that there had actually been a planning session). He had probably wanted to be with his family back in town anyway, and he had seemed to know what it was that he was doing.

Children from the school tended to drift in her direction any time that they were left unoccupied. She figured it was grasping at something familiar in the midst of the chaos. Several of their parents seemed a bit shell shocked, and she was making an effort at projecting calm, so there were a couple that were becoming downright clingy. She couldn't really blame them. There was a part of her that kept expecting to wake up from what would have to be considered her most oddly detailed dream ever. The knowledge that they were, in fact, trapped no matter what was going on outside was probably not helping the general mood of the gathered crowd, and she was really hoping that an exit would be forthcoming sooner over later. Calm was a fragile thing when it came to large groups of people. It would be best not to test their ability to maintain that state for very long. The fact that the radios weren't working was something that she had caught early on, but she wasn't going to be spreading that around. They were all okay despite the spur of the momentness of this plan, but any sort of mass panic in this space would go very badly very quickly. There was no need to borrow trouble, so she kept her thoughts about the lack of radio contact to herself. She passed around bottles of water (forcing herself not to cringe as months of work in getting her third graders to understand that drink sharing was a bad, germ ridden idea evaporated in the face of necessity) and told a couple of favorite stories.

Then, she felt a sudden shift in the mood of the children gathered around her and found its source in the somewhat labored breathing and not completely understandable muttering of Mr. Rennie. Children tended to be sensitive to the underlying mood of the adults around them and had picked up on the change in the man's demeanor before the adults sitting in small groups and talking quietly amongst themselves had realized that something off was happening.

She tried small talk and sips of water, encouraged the children to give him space, but he was quickly approaching an edge from which he was not going to be able to gently back away. When Gray Anderson stepped in to move the man, a younger her might have let it go. She might have refocused on the worried children around her and trusted that a little distance would do the trick. A younger her, however, didn't have a biased dislike of Mr. Anderson. The current her did.

He was one of those types of people that liked to have "conversations" with other people about something in front of you in a tone of voice that encouraged you to overhear even though he would not speak directly to you on the subject. She hated that. He had done that to Mitch more times than she could count in the time that her friend had been back in town. Mitch always shrugged it off (as he did a lot of things). Heather (while having no desire to pick a fight or cause a public scene over such things) was a little less inclined to let things like that go. She figured it was one of those things that always hit you harder when it was happening to someone you cared about versus happening to yourself. She understood that all people had a past. She even understood that sometimes people had the sort of past that might make other people treat them with a certain amount of caution. She didn't fault someone for that. She did, however, fault them when they were so caught up in the past that they were displaying an inability to see the present. There was no call to spend your time trying to undermine someone who was sincerely trying, and there was never a need to attempt to cripple them by always shoving them back toward what they used to be.

In short, Mr. Anderson just all kinds of set her nerves to twitching. Watching him help to lead Scott away from the rest of the people in the mine didn't sit well, so she followed them as soon as she could redirect the children gathered around her. She just couldn't see his particular brand of being "helpful" actually doing anything to help. Her friend needed space and distraction - not a lecture on what he should be doing.

"We've got this," Gray told her in what was clearly a dismissal when he noticed that she was right behind them. She didn't bother with an answer. She just sidestepped the man (who was too surprised that she was still moving to get further into her way). She launched into an initially one sided conversation about the plans for the elementary school's fall concert, led a set of deep breathing exercises, recited every silly joke she had heard passed around between her kids over the past few weeks, and generally poured everything she could think of into the gap in an attempt to keep the man in front of her too distracted to have time to give in to his panic.

Less people did seem to be helpful, but the enclosed space in combination with the stress of the situation without adding claustrophobia to the mix was too much for the man to work through without assistance. There were moments when he hovered very close to the edge of losing it (not helped, she noticed, by the tension in the air every time that Gray wandered back to check up on them after he had grumbled at them to make sure they kept things quiet and wandered back to the others), but they managed to keep him calm enough that the people yards away were able to forget what was happening with him. The panic didn't spread, and Heather considered that a battle won even if she did hurt for her friend's state.

She breathed one of the largest sighs of relief in her life after she handed Scott off to the people who were helping everyone through the tunnel and back outside. She breathed another one when she pieced together enough of the conversations around her to realize that the town hadn't picked up any worrying readings after the rain was over. The bus ride back to town was filled with the relieved chatter of the people around her, but she wasn't one of them. All that time down in the mine trying to help without actually being able to fix the problem with Scott had gotten to her. She needed to get her bearings again, and she ran through a mental checklist of things that she could work on at the shop. She really hoped that she beat Mitch there so that she could get her composure back before she got what she was sure was going to be an earful over the situation.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

He would fully admit to himself that shoving off Emily on Bonnie Richmond had been a huge relief. She had been agitated and worried over her fiancé, and Mitch didn't really do comforting or reassuring - especially not for someone who was only tolerating his presence because of the whacked out circumstances. It wasn't an awful car trip. In fact, it was positively radiating civility for an interaction between he and Emily in the time since Chris had been gone. He had still felt the tension practically bleeding out of his shoulders as he pulled away from the farm house.

They had caught Bonnie heading out to the woodpile, and Mitch was grateful that she had been at the house instead of them needing to go looking for her or Stanley. Emily had put up a token amount of fuss about needing to either get her car or get back to town, but he had been adamant that he had a job to get to and wasn't going to be playing her on demand driver. Bonnie had mentioned that Stanley was out helping some cousins which just happened to be the same place that he was heading. He had told them that he would let Stanley know that Emily was there and said that he would drive her back if the other man hadn't done it already when he was finished. When she had started making noise about just walking, he had shrugged his shoulders and told her to knock herself out while casually pointing at the clouds that were headed in their direction. He wasn't the boss of her and wasn't going to try to be, but the Emily he knew from his younger years would never have voluntarily trudged several miles through the rain. He was willing to bet that she hadn't changed that much and that she would still be sitting in the Richmond living room when he got back.

It had taken the combined efforts of both Mitch and Stanley's cousins to convince him that he shouldn't be walking across the fields to get home in the middle of the downpour. Telling him that Bonnie wasn't on her own had likely helped a little bit, but the random comment he had made about wondering what might be washing down in that rain that had come from the direction of Denver hadn't hurt. It was the fact that Mitch had said he was supposed to go back and pick up Emily anyway and might as well drive Stanley when he did that had cinched it. Stanley had been too busy looking at him in disbelief over he and Emily willingly agreeing to share a confined space to continue making noise about how he needed to get home as soon as possible. He had still paced back and forth in the background of the barn while Mitch was working (and about drove him crazy in the process). It sure didn't help Mitch focus and get his job completed any more quickly. The rain had poured and then slowed in the background and had actually been stopped completely for about 15 minutes when he finished packing up his tools.

Stanley wasn't making him any less crazy on the drive. He was the type of guy that in a disaster movie of some sort where the characters were trapped with a limited amount of oxygen would be compulsively telling some rambling story while everyone's breathing counted down to their demise. Mitch was mostly succeeding in completely tuning him out but the words "Is that from Jericho" actually broke through and caught his attention. He figured out what the man was referring to when he saw the police car pulled over to the side of the road. It looked empty.

He just wanted to get back to town. That's all he wanted. He needed just a few hours to himself to try to forget all the craziness going down so that he could get a little bit of sleep. He was tired and grumpy. He needed to check on Heather. He didn't need to be driving all over the lanes back here trying to figure out where someone else with a broken down car had gone. He wasn't a taxi service, but something told him that the drive with Stanley was going to get a hundred times more irritating if he didn't stop and make a pretense of checking it out. He muttered a whole string of uncomplimentary things under his breath as he pulled over to the side of the road (although with the lack of traffic he wasn't sure why it was that he even bothered). He did not know what it was that Stanley was expecting to find, but he hoped that he would get it over with quick. The thought that his life would be a lot easier on him if he had come out of prison with that chip on his shoulder and a vocal disdain for his fellow man flitted across his mind again, but he shook it off and followed Stanley out of the car.

They heard the thumping almost immediately. It took less than a minute to get the trunk popped. Mitch hadn't had any clear expectations about what it was that they were going to find inside (flashes of an adolescence filled with watching horror movies aside), but he could have done without the sight of Jimmy and Bill trussed up in their underwear being burned into his retinas.

There was a bit of a standoff after they got the two of them out and loose over whether or not they needed to go looking for the two convicts from a prison bus that had apparently jumped them and shut them in the trunk in the first place. (Mitch kept his comments about how that had happened to himself. He didn't need the never ending day of dealing with people he didn't want to be dealing with to get any worse.) He did let out a huffy "It ain't like you know how to track them, and you'll look pretty stupid trying in your boxers." Bill had about jumped down his throat at that, but Jimmy had cut him off before he could really get going. They had all piled into Mitch's car after determining that the cruiser was out of gas and no one responded to their attempts at raising someone on the radio.

They got to the farm and traded out Stanley for Emily. Mitch drove more quickly than was strictly legal on the way back (and not a one of them commented). By the time he finally got rid of all of them (because he was not taking any of Emily's passive aggressive hints about heading out with replacements for her tires) in order to head home, he was just flat out done.

Heather was fiddling with something on her chronically in need of fiddling ancient truck when he let himself into the building. He spotted the soft bracing on her leg. That made him feel better - that at least something had gone right that day. The expression on Heather's face when she looked up to say hello immediately made that better feeling go away. He knew that look. She was about to tell him something that he was not going to like.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

Heather was being weird.

That's all he really registered for a while, and he didn't give it a whole lot of thought because of the whole major disaster situation in which they were currently dwelling. He's sure he was being a little weird as well. Then, there was the fact that it felt like she was in some sort of new life threatening situation every time that he took his eyes off of her. There had been the whole bus crash/leg break thing, the being buried in the salt mine thing, the managing to stumble across a dying of radiation poisoning guy thing, and whatever it was that went down with Jake and Stanley when they were moving gasoline to power the generator at the med center thing (which she had not told him about, but he knew that there was some sort of a thing there because of the way that she glossed and changed the topic every time that it came up in conversation).

In short, there was a lot of stuff going down, and it felt like they were all running from one thing to the next with no downtime between things (which may be, in part, because he spends his time with Heather who is talking about things like what will happen when they run out of fuel for the generators and scribbling calculations on scrap pieces of paper that he thinks have something to do with the contents of her pantry).

He's had his own issues to deal with as well. He's had some farm equipment to work on here and there, but it's not like anyone is bringing their car by for an oil change these days. He's a little taken aback by how quickly cash has become useless, but he supposes that he shouldn't be. He knows how under the radar trade worked when he was in prison. He knows how there were outside the official banking channels business that went down with certain aspects of Jonah's sidelines. He shouldn't be surprised, but he somehow is. There is something about watching barter rise quickly to be the understood currency of what he considers the normal everyday people in the normal everyday world that makes everything around him feel surreal.

He thinks that the entire town breathed a collective sigh of relief when the power kicked on and the phones started ringing. Everyone's first thought was that it was all over. It might take a little more time, but the thoughts that had been chasing them all about how they might be on their own got quickly squashed down as paranoia and overreaction. That was just fear. Someone would be coming. Someone was going to fix things. Supply lines would be established. Things would get back to normal.

Those thoughts didn't even last a day.

Heather was practically spewing random information about everything that she had ever encountered anywhere in the realm of EMPs like some sort of volcano was erupting inside of her and she was afraid that she would forget or miss something if she did not get it spoken out loud as quickly as possible. That was normal Heather weird, and he was almost happy to see it. Then, reality started to set in for him hard.

He can fix things with an engine. In a world where the number of things with an engine that people are willing and able to keep running is dwindling, where does that leave him? He doesn't have an answer for that. He doesn't have an answer for a lot of things.

For example, he doesn't have an answer for what happened when he first crossed paths with the returned Jake Green. He was just at Mary's to pick up some tools that she had borrowed from Heather. He was pretty sure that she was working on something with thoughts toward making a still, but he didn't really need the details. The one thing that he wasn't surprised by was the fact that the first move toward some sort of reworking of the way that people lived would involve alcohol. He was just supposed to be in and out - get the bag and head back to the shop where Heather was putting together some sort of planter boxes for what she called a fall garden.

Jake Green had been sitting at the bar.

All Mitch had done was holler for Mary (it seemed like a better idea than walking into her back room to find her) and Jake had been up and in his face telling him that he wasn't welcome to come into town and start trouble. He had laughed which had just gotten Jake more bent out of shape, but there he was riding into town and playing hero after five years and assuming that everyone else would be exactly the way he remembered. Mitch, of course, must be holed up outside of town working for Jonah and leaving a trail of trouble in his wake. What else would he be doing? It had struck him as morbidly funny and that other guy he had never seen before had jumped in with a directive for there to be no trouble starting. He walked. Heather could get her tools another time.

He had walked for a long time.

There hadn't been much thinking while he was walking. There had just been a lot of mindless motion designed to drain some of the energy that wanted to be poured into lashing back at everyone who kept looking at him like he was still standing there with Chris's blood dripping from his hands. He had told Heather many times that it was just the way things were, but there were days that it all seemed to catch up to him and want to come bubbling out of him. Those days had been few and far between, but seeing Jake sitting there looking at him like that had broken down every wall he had built up between him and letting it all get to him.

When he had gotten back to the shop, there had been Heather. She didn't demand to know what had taken him so long. She didn't question why he had come back without her tools. She saw something on his face and didn't ask the questions that other people in his life would have demanded that he answer. She just asked him if he would help her hold something in place and gave him the option of elaborating on what had happened or not. On that occasion, he hadn't. They had just worked together in silence while he finished getting back his composure.

He had thrown himself into winterizing things (read windows particularly) because it was something he could do to keep himself busy that actually felt like it was useful. Heather had a really eclectic collection of books and had rummaged up some things from the depth of the school library's storage room that he was pretty certain the librarian hadn't known were there that had interesting ideas for a variety of things - some of which were more practically applicable than others.

He didn't pinpoint the source of Heather's current weirdness as quickly as someone who claimed her as his best friend probably should have. They worked together on some projects, and she was off doing her own thing on some others. (He and Emily may have had a mostly cordial car ride to their credit, but they still weren't going to be hanging with each other.)

He blamed the fact that he hadn't actually seen her and Jake together. He had known that she had gone to take some food over to the mayor's house when the man was sick. He had known that she had ended up staying there for a long time. Heather was a fixer, and it just made sense that she would help however she could. He had listened to her beat herself up after the fact about how she had nearly blown making ice. He had recognized that she wasn't in a mood to hear that if not for her, then there would not have been the chance of ice in the first place. What he hadn't heard from her was the details of her goodbye before Jake had gone traipsing off to who knew where in order to look for medicine.

He had known that she had been lending out her truck, but he had been too busy trying to creep around town avoiding both Jonah's reappearance inside city limits, the couple of guys from the compound that were over in lockup for some sort of theft charges, and the renewal of the wary glances in his direction by virtue of association to inquire too deeply.

Small town gossip never stops - not even when the world ends.

He overheard the talk about that little brunette school teacher kissing the mayor's wayward son right out in the middle of the street where anyone could see.

It was then that he figured out what was causing Heather's weirdness. It all made sense - the glossing she was doing when she was telling about what she had been up to, the awkward way she looked sometimes when he saw her out around town, and how out of proportionally upset she had gotten over the ice that almost wasn't.

Heather had a thing for Jake Green. What was he supposed to do with that?


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

Holidays were never really much of a thing for him. His family hadn't been big on them when he was a kid, and his adult years had consisted of a tendency to blow them off whenever possible. New Year's had meant a night out (but nights out had been their normal). The Fourth had been an excuse to blow stuff up (but it wasn't as though he and Chris had ever needed much in the way of an excuse). Those were his holiday standards.

Thanksgiving had never really registered as much of a thing in his world. His parents usually used the day as a way to pick up overtime. That their extended families had been too far away had always been wielded as an excuse not to visit. He had tagged along with Chris to his aunt's house once, but it hadn't left much in the way of a stellar impression on him. He hadn't been the type of kid to turn down a meal that he didn't have to put together for himself and stick in the microwave, but he had told Chris never again. It was awkward (maybe in large part because of the fact that Chris hadn't bothered to warn anyone that he was coming). He had had to watch while place settings and dishes and chairs were rearranged to make a space for him leaving everything looking off kilter and making it glaringly obvious that something had been added that didn't belong.

Emily had whined the whole time that she wanted to be excused to go to the Greens' house to play football. Chris's mom and aunt had been having some sort of weird conversation via eye contact over everyone's heads that was vaguely hostile. (They figured out later that she had already known that she was sick. She had already decided that she wasn't going to share that information with her children until she had no other choice.) He never went back. It was fine. It wasn't his family anyway.

Holidays in prison hadn't done anything to bring him around to what everyone else seemed so enamored with either. His parents had moved on by then, and in keeping with their lack of interest in special occasions, they made no special effort to contact him just because of the date on the calendar. He figured holidays were just never going to be his thing even as he held onto the cards for random holidays that he had never even heard of before that started coming his way after he had begun exchanging letters with Heather in earnest.

He had been out the previous Thanksgiving, and Heather had been there all excited about her plans to go to New Bern to spend the day with her friend Jenna at Jenna's grandmother's table where she had apparently spent most of her Thanksgivings even back when her father was still alive. He had been caught off guard when she asked him to come even though he shouldn't have been because it was Heather and that was just the way that Heather was. He told her no - the same answer that he gave her any time that she suggested that he go with her to meet up with her friends from her hometown.

He wasn't going to do that. He was selfish when it came to Heather. He could handle anything the people in Jericho might mutter or however they might want to cluck their tongues, but he could not stand around being the outsider while Heather was in the middle of her childhood friends (who no doubt knew all about exactly how the two of them had met and had all the preconceived notions that anybody used to looking out for Heather probably ought to have had about him). The next thing he knew, Heather's plans for the day had been cancelled (despite his protests that that had not been his intention). She had shown up on his doorstep at a ridiculously early point in the morning, started unloading bags in his pathetic little kitchen, and demanded a colander. Once she realized that he truly did not have any idea what it was that she was talking about (let alone actually possess such an item), she had repacked her bags and forced him back to her place where he received a crash course on the fundamentals of cooking a successful holiday dinner (which was pretty much wasted on him because the majority of his brain cells were still fast asleep).

The dinner had been really good though - and it wasn't just the food. He had wanted to feel bad that she had rearranged all of her traditions for him, but he hadn't been able to make himself summon up any angst while they laughed at random silly stories over pieces of pie.

He didn't expect there to be a Thanksgiving this year. He wouldn't have been disappointed if there hadn't been. He is, after all, used to it not being a thing. He underestimated Heather.

She asked him for help pulling something out from where it was pushed back on a shelf in the top of one of her closets, and he figured that he was being sent to pull out a container of winter clothing or something of that sort. The plastic tub that he retrieved was too small for that, but he didn't give it any further thought. She needed something; he could reach it. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't until she excitedly waved him over to where she had popped off the top at her kitchen table that he saw the expression on her face and knew that something was up.

"Thank you, Jenna," she announces as she grins down at whatever is inside. His confusion must be visible as she proudly holds up a can of turkey (he's not so sure that he's ever actually seen canned turkey before).

"It's Thanksgiving in a box," Heather announces as if that adequately explains why she was keeping canned poultry at the top of her linen closet. He holds his hands up in an "And?" sort of a way and the elaboration begins.

"That first year after Dad died," she tells him. "I didn't want to come home for any of the holidays. Jenna's family would have taken me in a heartbeat, but I was being all standoffish about it, so she and her grandmother mailed me a care package for every holiday that year. They were hilarious and kind of awesome and they made everything seem like it was going to be okay. When I told them that I was staying in Jericho for last Thanksgiving, she sent me another one as a joke. I left it together and stuck it up on that shelf and forgot about it until a couple of days ago when I was trying to figure out what I could make that would be at least moderately appetizing. So, we have all the trappings of the best Thanksgiving dinner that long term storage items in a box can provide."

By the time that she finished pulling everything out of the tub, Mitch was inclined to agree with her. Things were getting a little tight in the food department with the cool weather sitting in in earnest, and Jenna's care package had clearly not been intended to feed only one person. Mitch actually found himself mentally tallying one of Heather's supply lists and thinking out how long the various items could be made to last when she interrupted him with another phrase that he had never heard before.

"I'm thinking deliver and dash," she was saying.

"What?" He asks not even trying to hide that he hadn't been paying attention.

"Deliver and dash," she replies laughing at what is clearly a happy memory. "Jenna and Suze and I used to do it all the time when we were kids. We would bake brownies or cookies or something and plate it up and talk Ted into leaving it on people's porches and running before he could get caught."

"You and your friends were really weird," he tells her trying to process what she is saying.

"Not the first time that has been suggested." She must catch the look on his face. "We could parcel it out and have a few days of really nice meals between us," she says. "Or we could pick out some people we know don't have anybody and let them know that they aren't forgotten."

He can't come up with an argument for that - not with the hopeful expression she is wearing and the "I'm up to something" sparkle that has taken over her eyes. "It's your stuff," he tells her with a shrug.

"If we make turkey/stuffing burgers, then I think we can make it go a lot further," she begins to think out loud. He lets her go. He even lets himself get roped into assisting with minimal eye rolling.

"Old Man Oliver is not going to eat anything that he finds left on his doorstep," is the only objection that he voices during the entire process.

"I know that," Heather insists. "I'll deliver that plate in person. You can come with me. It'll be fun," she coaxes.

He goes. He leaves plates in front of doors, knocks, and runs like he is reliving some of the pranks of his late childhood. He even stands and carries on a strange but civil conversation with Old Man Oliver that just brings home for him how peculiar his world has gotten (and it isn't all because of the bombs).

As he and Heather sit on her living room floor eating a pumpkin muffin each by the light of a couple of candles after their all around town delivery service has come to an end, he has to admit that the day has been a good one in an unexpected way.

There had been turkey and sort of pumpkin and eating with Heather and being talked into trying things that he had never experienced before. In a lot of ways, it was oddly similar to his last Thanksgiving - making the day bizarre in its normalcy.

He's thinking that he could get used to things being this way.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

"It was stupid," he insisted not willing to cut the woman under discussion any slack.

"It accomplished what she wanted," Heather answered sounding less like she was defending the actions in question and more like she was suggesting that it was over and couldn't be changed.

"Doesn't make it any less stupid," he shook his head as they walked along the sidewalk toward what Jericho considered its downtown. "That might even make it worse. When you get away with doing stupid stuff, it just makes you think that it's a good idea to keep doing more stupid things."

"The voice of experience talking there?" She asked him with a teasing smile.

"Yes," he replied unwilling to take the out and change the subject. "Stupid stuff gets people killed." Heather reached out and placed her hand on his arm. He sighed. "I don't want you thinking that there is anything safe about being out there."

"I'm not . . .," she started before he cut her off with a huffing sound.

"You're going to end up in the middle of something one way or another," he told her. "Whether it's because you're always volunteering for stuff or because you're around Emily when something goes down, it's going to happen. Those guys out there . . .," he trailed off losing himself for a moment in past associations. "The only reason Emily isn't dead or didn't at least come back bleeding from places that shouldn't have holes in them is because Jonah happened to be standing in the right place at the right moment. They would have shot her without a second thought. Desperate people who think they are about to lose something that they're sure they need - you don't know what they can do when they are like that."

She started to say something that got lost as they rounded the corner and finally found the source of the commotion that they had come to investigate. There had been a fire. Technically, there still was a fire given the still visible flame state of the place in front of them. Gracie's Market wasn't looking so good. Gracie herself wasn't looking so hot wrapped in a blanket with her foot propped up on a crate and a bandage of some sort hiding a section of her head.

That kid that was always creeping around the background of her place hauling boxes and sweeping floors was kneeling beside her with a protective arm around her shoulders staring at the building in front of them as if he couldn't quite trust his eyes as he saw something that he thought was permanent disappearing from his life.

Mitch knows that look, but this is just a building. He knows that'll dawn on the kid soon enough. He expects that his arm while tighten up a little more around the old lady when it does. He doesn't stand around waiting or watching for it. It's none of his business.

He trails after Heather as she asks questions and generally tries to be helpful. He keeps his mouth shut and listens. Gracie Leigh isn't his favorite person in the world, but he understands that watching something that was yours burn to a crisp has got to suck. He probably wouldn't be nearly as shell shockedly calm if that was his shop turning to ash.

There's not a lot for anyone to do. Any ability that this town had to actively put out a fire is long since gone. The fact that everything around has brick on the exterior has kept it from spreading out on either side. He doesn't know about structural integrity or what the actual walls are made from in there. For all he knows, there will be a big mess to clean up inside with a salvageable shop at the end. Then again, the whole thing might be a loss.

He's got enough distance from the situation to be thinking thoughts like how glad he is that the town hadn't started moving the items from the food drop into the store for distribution yet. Someone would probably tell him that that was tacky if he said it out loud, but he would be willing to bet that he wasn't the only one that was thinking it (turns out that he would have won that bet).

When Heather wanders back to him (after squeezing Gracie's hand and getting no response), he's heard enough muttering to know that there are people already assuming that this was not an accident. He's heard Jonah's name more than a couple of times as well as at least three different versions of the way Gracie's refusal to do business with him any longer had gone down.

He's tried to avoid all Jonah situations, but he is only having moderate luck with that. There was an altercation over the supplies from the food drop already, the Gracie thing, and the couple of guys he once upon a time would have referred to as his buddies that had made an escape from lock up after some sort of an incident involving supplies and horse wrangling. He thinks the only person less happy to see the man's car pull into town than him was Emily - even then it might be a toss-up. Emily only had to be angry. Mitch had to be worried. The man hadn't taken the news that he wasn't coming back to his previous employer very graciously.

Gray Anderson is front and center with a little group of people surrounding him as he talks at Johnston Green while talking to them. He can feel the tension hit Heather as she realizes. She hates it when people do that. Mitch can't really say that he is much of a fan either. It's not like he's got friendly ties to the Greens, but he's kind of hoping (one of those things to not say out loud) that the Mayor will clock the guy for being so obnoxious.

He tells himself that he doesn't do things that way any longer (and he doesn't), but he figures he wouldn't mind so much cutting someone else a certain amount of slack for a lack of restraint in the face of blatant provocation.

"We all know who did this," the man is saying not even trying to pretend that he is actually looking at the people that he is supposedly talking to or that he isn't speaking about three times louder than he actually needs to be. "We all know that Jonah Prowse doesn't take kindly to people that sever business ties with him. I know. I've dealt with him myself."

He steers Heather clear of the whole mini showdown with an attempt at a stern look to remind her that it isn't her business. He tries not to think about how much easier it seemed to get to pull her away when she realized that Jake was headed in their general direction. He doesn't want to think about that; he's been avoiding it actually. He keeps hoping that that whole thing will just kind of go away if he pretends that it doesn't exist. Given where he has ended up in contrast to where he could have been, he figures that he might just be that lucky.

Gray's mouth doesn't stop running. Gracie's got a busted ankle and a gash in her head with a hefty dose of smoke inhalation. Whoever knocked her around didn't care whether she made it out of that fire or not. Despite what people are whispering and then saying louder as the hours go by, Mitch knows that if they had cared about her being dead, then she would be. There's a distinction, but he supposes that doesn't matter enough for most people to consider. Gracie sure doesn't. She's the only person in town who is doing more talking than Gray.

People are freaked that all of the supplies that they had decided were going to save them could have gone up in smoke if things had gone down a day or two later. People are freaked out in general. He isn't surprised when there is some sort of an altercation over bringing in Jonah. He isn't surprised when the election ends the way that it does. Scared people latch on to people who are willing to make them promises to get them what they think they need to stop being scared. He's seen a lot of that in his life. This is no different.

They are handing out food packets nearly before the man has finished taking his oath of office.

Mitch doesn't have an independent opinion on that one. He's seen enough scribbled numbers on scrap pieces of paper lately to know that Heather is worried. He's been trying not to think that far ahead because there is nothing but a big, dark blank of uncertainty when he does.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

"This is a very, very bad idea."

He wanted to say that to her. He wanted to repeat it several times until she actually heard what he was and wasn't saying and decided that she would not be going on this exploratory field trip out into the unknown looking for something that might or might not be there that might or might not be able to be used for something that might or might not help them out at some point in time loosely defined as eventually.

"You are not going on this trip."

He also wanted to say that. He knew that he could not actually say that to her; he knew that he really didn't have a right to say that. He also knew that saying that would not go over well at all. Besides, he wasn't really the order giving type. He had been a follower for most of his life. Even if he was learning to go his own way and make his own choices, that didn't mean that any sort of command came easily to him. He wasn't about to start being dictatorial with Heather (not that Heather would let him get away with it).

"Don't go."

He considered that one even more than the others. That phrase kept him up all night with variations of how it might play out going around and around in his head - most of them playing out equally badly in his imagination (although not as badly as his mental images of the previous one). It didn't help him hold his tongue knowing that he really, really wanted to say that one even if it did sound like some sort of a cheesy line out of one of those movies that he would deny ever willingly watching. It was short and to the point (and most definitely what he wanted), but it also said a lot of things that he wasn't sure that he was in a position to say.

"I'm going with you."

He couldn't do that. It wasn't that he wasn't willing to go watch Heather's back. In fact, if she had to go out there at all, then his preference would be that he was the one keeping an eye on her. He was trying to reconcile himself to the fact that he wasn't going to be. He couldn't make this trip. He still wasn't sure what it was that Heather had said to finagle herself into a spot, but he was pretty sure that there was nothing of value that he could offer that would mitigate the absolute disaster that would be him and Jake trapped in a car together for multiple hours. Forget the awkward ride that he had given Emily. Forget running into danger from a road gang of some sort or unscrupulous people at this so called trading post. They would never make it there in the first place. The two of them had already proved on the relatively benign meeting ground of Bailey's Tavern that they were not yet capable of occupying the same space without picking at each other's scabs. They would never let him tag along.

In the end, he didn't say any of those phrases that were swirling around in his head. He asked her questions instead. He asked about what sort of a plan they had for getting there, what terms the town was willing to meet in trade, and what their exit strategy was in case something went south. Heather didn't have any answers to give him - which was so completely unlike Heather that it nearly stopped his questions cold before his shock turned to upset and anger that she was willing to go into this nearly blind and trusting that the people she was going with (the ones that were obviously not including her in their planning session if a planning session was even occurring which was not a given since it was Jake Green that they were talking about) had something figured out for all of the what ifs that they might run into out there.

It was deeply unHeather. Heather always had a plan. Heather had back up plans. There were times that there were even back up plans for the back up plans. He had found her scribbled notes for taking Emily's mind off of the passing of her wedding day. It had included entries A-G because Heather was, apparently, not going to take no for an answer. Emily had chosen to go with plan C, so some of the more inventive ideas had never made it off the ground, but the point was that Heather had put more thought into a distraction attempt than she appeared to be putting into her personal safety in the face of heading out into a world where there was very little to stop some very unsavory people from doing whatever they decided tickled their fancy at the moment.

That was unacceptable.

He redirected his energy from thinking of ways to talk her out of going to making sure that she was actually ready to go.

"You know what Roger said," he reminded her.

"Yeah," she replied. "They have security, and they take their jobs seriously. I'm not going there to start trouble. They won't have any reason to be serious about me."

"Heather," he chided frustrated with how her expectations of people were getting in the way. It wasn't that she was naive. It was just that she believed in chances. He had been on the receiving end of that belief himself, but he needed her to be wary.

"I know there are a million things that could go wrong," she tried to reassure him. "It's not like I think I'm going on a field trip to the petting zoo."

"I seem to remember there being a list of at least a dozen things that could have gone wrong on that field trip to the petting zoo," he tried to cut a little bit of the tension that was building up between them.

"Animals are unpredictable," she fired back.

"So are people," he reminded her.

"What is it that you want me to say, Mitch?" She asked with a sigh. "This is something we need. It's something I can do to help. I can't just not go."

"I'm not asking you not to go. I'm just asking that you plan ahead and that you don't take any extra chances by doing anything crazy."

"If I haul a 72 hour bag with me, will that make you feel better?" She lifted an eyebrow.

"It's a start," he said folding his arms and waiting for what else she might offer.

"Mitch?" She asked tilting her head to the side with a look of concern.

"Yeah?"

"Try not to get too worried," she said with a reassuring smile that wasn't working for him. "I won't do crazy things. You know me."

"That's why I'm worried."


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

"You wanna repeat that?" He demanded stepping into the other man's personal space as soon as the words had left his mouth. He could hear her voice in his head telling him that he needed to calm down. He could also hear his younger self telling him that he should slam him up against the car in order to bring home his point that he was less than pleased with what he was hearing. He didn't touch him. He kept his hands clenched firmly at his sides, but he did not back up at all.

His eyes wanted to flick toward the back seat of the car again, but he knew that it would do him no good. It was not as though there was some place in the vehicle in which she could be hiding. It had been obvious from the moment they had pulled in that they were missing one of the passengers. Mitch had been stunned enough by all of the potential reasons (each one more horrible than the last) that had begun running through his head when his eyes processed what it was that he was seeing that he had frozen. All three of them had been out of the vehicle and greeting Jimmy before his feet had started moving. They had walked him straight at Jake who was doing his level best to avoid looking him directly in the eyes even as he offered a halting story about where Heather had gone. That did nothing but make him angrier because it screamed guilt. It just made Mitch close in on him further.

"Son," the elder Green started from somewhere over his shoulder.

"I want an explanation, Mayor Green," he shot at the man without taking his eyes off a Jake who was starting to look like he was going to start pushing back. There was a part of Mitch that would have relished the fight - he would have enjoyed having the outlet for all of the turmoil that was rolling around inside of him. There was another part of him that knew that he didn't do that anymore. A fist fight in the middle of the street wouldn't get him any answers. It wouldn't get him any closer to Heather. It would just waste time that he could be using to figure out what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. He did need to do something, but he needed to make sure that what he was doing was actually productive.

"I'm not the Mayor anymore," the other man deflected in a tone of voice that told a tale of how many times he must have said those words in the days since the election.

"And I'm not your son," Mitch snapped back. He was trying, but he wasn't in a mood to be patient.

"She wanted to help," Jake told him finally looking him in the eye. Mitch didn't even want to try to decipher everything that was visible in that look.

"She always wants to help," Mitch responded. "That's why she went in the first place. It doesn't tell me why other people let her get in a truck with a group of strangers and go traipsing off to who knows where in the middle of the end of the world as we knew it with nothing but a backpack. Which part of that was it that you thought was a good idea? Huh?"

"She's a grown woman," Johnston Green interjected. "If she wants to go with someone she said was a friend to try to work out this equipment problem that we're having, then none of us have any call telling her that she can't."

"You think this was a good idea?" He spun around to find the other man entirely too close behind him.

"I think something good can come from it."

"Not what I asked."

"I understand that you're upset . . .," he started.

"Screw this," he managed to maneuver by him without actually having to push him out of the way.

"Don't go doing anything crazy," he called from behind him after a couple of beats. Mitch turned back around.

"That's funny because I told her the exact same thing," he muttered. "I'm fixing this."

"You can't go running off to New Bern in the middle of the night," Jake decided to offer.

"What happened to not telling people what they can't do?"

"You need to calm down," Jake told him moving in his direction. Mitch could see shadows of the Jake he used to know peeking through on his face even in the dim lighting. He had a short moment of wondering about whether the two of them were actually in a similar place - trying to keep their head above water before they got sucked back down into the habits and temperaments of what they used to be. He found himself wanting to ask the other man if Jake found the temptation as exhausting to deal with as he did in these moments when it seemed as if everything would have been so much easier the old way. He pushed that down as quickly as it occurred to him. He and Jake would be having heart to hearts in exactly never.

"What do you care? Ain't your job to look out for me," Mitch reminded him.

"Look," Jake had that pretentious expression on his face that screamed that he was trying to be oh so very gracious while the person with whom he was dealing was just being unnecessarily difficult. "Heather wanted . . .," Mitch didn't let him finish expressing the thought.

"Don't pretend like you care what Heather wants," he snorted. "You've been brushing her off for weeks. Didn't put up much of a fight when she said she was going, did you?" He accused. "Makes it easier on you this way, doesn't it?"

Johnston physically stepped between them even though neither one of them had moved toward the other. Apparently, they weren't the only two standing there struggling with who they used to be.

"Let's just take a deep breath," he tried to calm them both down. The problem with that was that Mitch was already calm. He was calm and focused, and he was going to get Heather.

"Mr. Cafferty?" He had forgotten the kid was lurking in the background.

"What?"

"She asked me to give you this," he said holding out a folded piece of notebook paper.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

If Heather's scribbled note was supposed to make him calmer, then . . . well, it did sort of work. He is calmer than he was when he originally realized that she was missing from the backseat of the car. He hasn't loaded up his car and taken off down the highway toward New Bern in the middle of the night at least. That is probably about as calm as could be reasonably hoped for at this point in time. She asked him to trust her, and he really wants her in front of him so that he can tell her that it isn't about him not trusting her. It's about him not being ready to trust for the best from the rest of the world.

She said she would only be staying long enough to determine whether or not the machinery at some brake assembly plant could be practically converted to make the part that they need. She had joked about having her emergency bag with her and how she would be back before she ran out of toothpaste. She had even mentioned this giving her a chance to check up on a few people. The tone of the whole thing was matter of fact and positive and completely Heather, but he still didn't like it. He gets that she wants to help; she wouldn't be Heather if she didn't. He doesn't like the way that it feels as though she thinks that she owes people things that Mitch knows that she doesn't really owe. It doesn't make him feel any better to know that people who are supposed to be unofficial leaders in this town (former Mayor or not, it doesn't change the fact that Johnston Green is still a man to whom people readily listen) were so willing to let Heather take off without asking any questions just for some nebulous possibility. He can't understand why none of them offered a protest.

There is supposed to be a meet up in four days to exchange some salt for some parts for something or other that Jericho supposedly can use. He doesn't know what they are because Jake's rushed telling of the details made it pretty clear that he had no idea what it was that they were actually trading for - it seemed that Heather and Johnston (and, surprisingly, the kid who was running all of Gracie's errands for her while she was healing up) had been the ones doing the discussing and planning. All he knows is that when that truck rolls out to the meet up at some point on the road that isn't the one in New Bern's direction (yet another detail that hasn't been explained to him), he will be in it or on it or balanced on a stack of bags of salt or wherever it is that he needs to be in order to make the trip. All her pithy little statements about there being no need to worry about her were going to get a heaping dose of reality check as quickly as he could manage. He was coming to get her, and no arguments or awkward history with Jake Green or anything of the sort was going to get in his way.

That was the plan anyway. It turned out that it didn't exactly work out that way. No one made any noise of protest about his inclusion in the group that was going. Johnston looked like he expected it to be coming; Jake looked like he was too busy being distracted by other things to even realize that the other man was there until they were a good ten miles down the road. Johnston sat in the middle of the bench seat of the truck looking pleased with himself after a small back and forth with the new mayor that no one could hear, but everyone could read the facial expressions from after it was over.

Mrs. Green hadn't looked particularly pleased as she was seeing them off, but she had smiled and nodded at Mitch and asked him to help look after their backs for her - which was a little surreal if he was being honest.

Johnston had made periodic casual conversation. Jake had snapped out of whatever broody mood he was in long enough to shoot a "try not to cause trouble" in his direction, and the elder Mr. Green had broken in before Mitch could snap back something snotty and probably more mean spirited than it needed to be by bursting out laughing and muttering just audible enough things about his son encouraging people not to cause trouble being the funniest thing that he had heard in years.

The people from New Bern were already waiting when they got there trying to look casual about it while every instinct Mitch possessed was screaming at him that they had scouted this place out and likely had look outs and what not scattered around. He felt rather like he had back in prison when other inmates had set up traps when they thought someone was in need of a beating. It didn't help any that he could tell that Johnston and Jake had both tensed up every bit as much as he had in response to what they were driving toward (but he figured Johnston, at least, was drawing from a slightly different well of experience).

Heather was nowhere to be seen, and Mitch was less than pleased (in addition to that setting off an entirely different level of warning bells in his head). He and Jake may or may not have gotten into a bit of what Heather would have called a testosterone contest spiral after they pulled to a stop and got out of the vehicle. He would not admit to actually racing the other man to be the person to demand to know where she was first. It was a pertinent question and needed to be asked immediately. It had absolutely nothing to do with ensuring that he was the one that was doing the asking.

He didn't appreciate the way that that Russell guy (familiar to Jake and Johnston from their previous trip but not a name that he recognized from Heather's stories of growing up in the other town) who had come to make the trade averted his eyes after saying that Heather had changed her mind and wanted to do a little more work on the project before she made the trip back. It was probably the first moment in years that he and Jake had actually been able to make eye contact and both know what the other was thinking and been in complete agreement about it. There was something not right going on in New Bern, and Heather, of course, had landed herself right in the middle of whatever it was.

The folded up note that the man handed him didn't help any either. It had obviously been refolded at least once (probably twice), so he knew that it was likely that other people had read it before it was okayed to be passed on to him. He knew how prison mail worked, and this bore all the signs of having been through an inspection process. What he didn't know was whether or not he was supposed to know that. Was he supposed to recognize it for what it was, or was he supposed to just assume that it had gotten handled in transit? He couldn't decide which one was worse.

He also didn't appreciate the little stand down signals that he was getting from Johnston Green, but he, against his original impulses, decided to follow the other man's lead and see how the exchange went before taking some sort of action that Heather would probably term reckless (which was so ironic that he nearly chuckled out loud at the thought).


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: _Jericho_ is not mine.

Mitch was tired of this. He had bitten his tongue. He had let the others lead. He had gone along with the whole let it play out and see where it is that this is going thing. He had hated every moment of it. He had nearly beaten his head against the side of the truck in frustration when he realized that they were just going to let Russell and the others go without demanding any of the answers that he needed. He had decided to trust Johnston Green, and he still couldn't say for certain whether or not that had been the right decision for him to make. He understood what the man had said after the fact. He got that they were too far away to really do anything but potentially cause a bigger problem. It made sense in an arbitrary, looking at the big picture sort of a way. The problem with that was that he didn't want to be looking at the big picture. He just wanted to look at the little picture of Heather and the fact that there was something wrong.

He stared at the letter all the way back to Jericho. He and Heather had started their friendship via letter. He hated the way that he felt like they were ending with the same medium. He didn't want to feel that way. She was supposed to be squeezed into the truck with them on this trip back. He wasn't supposed to be left wondering what was going on and whether or not she was really okay. He wasn't the politest person to be trapped in a vehicle with at that point, but he wasn't in a mood to care. The words and letters were swimming across the page in front of him without making any sense. He couldn't seem to get them to stay still. It was only as they passed a sign that informed them that they only had three more miles to go that he realized something - nothing about the sentence structure in the letter felt familiar. He had traded dozens of letters with her while he had still been in prison, but the letter in front of him felt like it had been written by a complete stranger. He stared at it a little harder. The other occupants of the truck jumped when he laughed out loud.

Jake swore as he corrected after the way he had wrenched the wheel in response to the sound, but Johnston just looked at him and waited for him to give an explanation.

"It's a code," Mitch told the former mayor. "She sent me a code."

"Smart girl," Johnston commented with a grin. "What have we got?"

"I'll need some scratch paper and a little time," he responded.

In the end, the message was simple. There was something wrong in New Bern, but Heather wasn't sure what it was. She couldn't explain in the note, but she was fine. She just needed some time to figure out what was happening. She would be back as soon as she could.

Johnston had nodded his head and said some things under his breath that Mitch didn't bother to try to decipher. He was too busy being upset that that was all that there was.

He was chronically antsy in the days that followed. He packed a bag to put in his car and figured out gas mileage and amounts necessary over and over again, but he never tried to take off and go. He was letting Heather's instructions to wait win - for now.

Then, he came down with some sort of a stomach bug that knocked him on his backside so hard that he actually lost track of the days. He couldn't remember ever being so sick in his life. He didn't know whether he had picked up a virus from somewhere or whether he had actually somehow managed to give himself food poisoning. In the end, it didn't matter. What mattered was that he managed to be curled up in a ball shut in his apartment too out of it to know what was going on in the town when the first windmill rolled in from New Bern without Heather accompanying it. He missed the group of volunteers that went back with them as collateral toward the construction of more.

That was what made him the angriest. He would have been the first person in the volunteer line. When he was a little calmer (and thinking a little more clearly) after he realized what had gone down while he was ill, then he decided that it was maybe just as well that he hadn't obligated himself to staying in the other town and owing them labor. He wanted to be able to collect Heather and be on his way. The problem now was that he had no delusions about the conditions out on those roads. He needed someone to watch his back so that he could get there.

He wasn't expecting that person to drop into his lap just as he was getting worried and desperate enough to be considering asking Jake. Roger's exile was something that he wasn't going to bother himself about the politics inherent. He was just going to take the chance that it provided him. The other man had been out there and made it while shepherding an entire group of people on foot. That had to have given him a solid foundation in back watching. He had never interacted with the other man much, but he was a friend of Heather's through the Emily connection (and it wasn't like the man had a lot of options). He was counting on the combination being enough.

He could only scavenge enough gas to be certain of getting there and getting back out of there - there wasn't enough to make it all the way back to Jericho. It wasn't the best plan ever, but it was what he had. He was finished waiting.

He took a couple of back ways and was parked and waiting for Roger when the man came walking around a curve in the road. The steady way that his eyes assessed the situation was something that Mitch found reassuring. He delivered his sales pitch, and Roger was climbing into the car almost before he had finished.

They were making their way through a very not direct route toward their goal in less than ten minutes from when the other man had appeared.

* * *

What happened when they got there? Well, that's a story for another time.


End file.
